September 25, 2015

September 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my seventh response to “Establishing the Macrobehavior of Ethical Self-Control in Arrangement of Macro Contingencies in Two Macro Cultures” (2014) by Aécio Borba, Emmanuel Zagury Tourinho and Sigrid S. Glenn. The authors suggest “macro-contingencies” to account for “the effect produced by many individuals over time.” They reason “a social problem appears when a large number of individuals frequently engage in practices that have deleterious effects on many members of a culture.” I disagree with this kind of group-think, which is anti-social. Presumably, a problem is only a problem if “a large number of individuals frequently engage in practices that have deleterious effects on many members of the culture.” I think a problem is already a problem when it concerns only just one member of the culture. If we are only going to pay attention to problems when many members of the culture have been affected, we are clearly running behind the facts.  This is what culture often makes us do. Cultures have been historically stable, but this is rapidly changing due to modern commerce. It remains to be seen if this change is going to be rapid enough to make us deal with what happens at an individual level, at the level of the organism, as Skinner would say. Culture has prevented us from recognizing how we talk with each other. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is perpetuated by our cultures, but Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) creates a new order.

SVB and NVB can be viewed as cultural tendencies made possible by  “macro-contingencies”, which “are functional relationships between a macro-behavior and the consequences it produces.” Rates of SVB and NVB within a culture tell us if this culture is taking care of its problems. If the culture produces high rates of SVB problems are addressed and prevented, but if it has high rates of NVB problems are swept under the carpet. “Glenn (2004) proposed the concept of macro-behavior to refer to “similar patterns of behavioral content, usually resulting from similarities in [the] environment”. The United States has higher rates of NVB than Denmark or Holland. However, higher rates of SVB, which are prevalent in more peaceful cultures don’t make any difference for the United States or any other culture, which have higher rates of NVB.

SVB is to human interaction, as medicine is to disease. Superstitious cultures produce higher levels of NVB and prevent access to modern science and medicine. We have dominated each other with our culture and only in recent history we have tried to respect and accept each other’s culture. Cultural variables are overrated, as they are not as aligned with our survival as phylogenetic and ontogenetic variables. SVB and NVB are the “similar patterns of behavioral content, usually resulting from similarities in [the] environment.” Without addressing these universal subsets of vocal verbal behavior, we make it seem as if biology has nothing to do with how we talk and therefore, with culture.

Aversive environments are created by speakers who induce negative affect in the listener. That this obvious phenomenon is not researched indicates how influenced we are by it. In SVB the speaker affects the listener with an appetitive contingency as he or she induces positive emotions in the listener. Only high rates of SVB predict if a culture can survive. As long as we are only focusing on behavior patterns such as “styles of dressing, littering, and eating fast food”, we are giving culture a very superficial treatment. How we behave verbally and vocally, as individuals, within each culture, needs to be urgently addressed.

These authors “want to establish a difference between the outcomes of a macro-contingency that result from the sum of individual behaviors, and the aggregate product that is a result of recurring interlocking behaviors, as in a meta-contingency (Malott & Glenn, 2006, pp. 32-3 on the distinction of these aggregate products). Without having addressed the distinction between SVB and NVB, without having identified the vocal verbal behavior that makes it possible for these behaviors to become interlocked, they hypothesize about “aggregate products.”

The author’s ignorance about day-to-day interactions, the glue that holds our cultures together, is apparent in the statement “The only selection that occurs is of operant behaviors, not of interrelationships between operants (Glenn, 2004; Malott & Glenn, 2006).” What about selection at a cultural level? This contradictory remark is in denial of the natural world. All human beings regardless of their culture experience  two ways of talking: NVB, in which the speaker coerces the listener, and SVB, in which the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks and is his or her own listener. In SVB, the speaker is perceived differently by the listener than in NVB. In NVB, the speaker threatens, intimidates, overwhelms, distracts, bamboozles and sells the listener, but SVB is without any aversive stimulation by the speaker.

There is nothing “delayed” about the effect the speaker has on the listener. What may be true for eating patterns is not true for how we interact. The authors state “It is possible that the cumulative effect does not affect individual behavior in situations in which that effect is highly delayed or in which the individual contribution to the final product is of low magnitude.” Their argument about the existence of “meta-contingency” presumably will reduce government spending, but what about our ability to talk peacefully and solve our problems? This requires a particular kind of talking. NVB wasn’t peaceful and couldn’t create peace. SVB is peaceful and immediately creates peace. The “delayed consequence” was a sales-pitch which we bought into. SVB is the only immediate way to “produce a consequence that is beneficial to the culture.” It is this immediate consequence which will allow us to carry on with it even if it is not reciprocated. Many people, the authors included, are unaware of SVB and subsequently put all their eggs in the fictional basket of NVB. “The existence of ethical sanctions contingent on impulsive responses” is not what will make us and keep us aware of SVB. In fact, it has prevented it. The expression and exploration of our impulsive responses will lead to understanding of how we are affected by each other while we speak. This understanding is still nonexistent, that is why NVB is ubiquitous.